December 2015 Infinity Gaming Magazine

Page 31

DECEMBER 2015

Paul Swaddle is CEO of Pocket App a leading design company in the App Construction world

This isn’t just a UK or Europewide position, I remember reading a quote from CIA Director John O. Brennan recently in which he blamed privacy concerns for undermining the security work his organisation carries out. “We should be sharing a lot more information than we are as a nation, but programmatic, technical, and legal challenges as well as concerns about privacy and the role of government have hampered progress.” The counter to this argument, the privacy position, contests that the obvious flaw in this plan is that this ‘backdoor’ would no doubt

present opportunities for malicious entry. Moreover, it’s argued that given the increased reliance on encryption from a range of online businesses, the dissolution of end to end encryption would serve the death knell to essential online offerings like internet banking. A survey by BBA and EY showed that mobile and internet banking is now being used for transactions worth nearly £1billion per day, however, how many would feel comfortable knowing that application security had been compromised to allow a middleman from the government to ‘wiretap’ communications? As I alluded to earlier, it’s not only

communication apps which are under the microscope at present, as in-game messaging is also rumoured to be a potential enabler in the communication of terrorist groups. In fact, Belgian Federal Home Affairs Minister, Jan Jambon, has said outright that the PS4 is used by ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp.” To many, the following may sound more in keeping with a science fiction movie or the literary works of George Orwell. However,

INFINITY GAMING

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